Sebastian reached the village of Little Stretton late in the afternoon of a long, golden August day.
Lying some fourteen miles to the north of Ludlow on the main coach road that led to Shrewsbury, the village nestled at the base of a stretch of highlands known as the Long Mynd. Its cottages were a charming mix of half-timbered, red brick, and weathered gray stone, its gardens of hollyhocks and tumbling roses well tended, the breezes sweeping down from the hills above sweetly scented by the slopes’ tangle of gorse, bracken, and heather.
Miss Jane Owens lived in a somewhat dilapidated whitewashed cottage situated on the banks of the River Ashes Hollow. She answered the door herself, a small, slim woman in her forties with a no-nonsense starched white cap covering short, curly brown hair barely touched by gray. Her forehead was high, her mouth small, her gray eyes wide with surprise at finding a fashionably dressed lord standing on her porch and an elegant curricle with a well-bred pair of spirited chestnuts at her gate.
“Miss Owens?” he asked with a bow.
“Yes?” she answered pleasantly. But she was obviously good at reading people, because whatever she saw in his face caused her smile to falter. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there? What is it? Dear God, what has happened?”
“I think you’d best sit down before I tell you,” said Sebastian. He had come equipped with a letter of introduction penned by Lord Seaton. But it didn’t look as if he would need it.
She gripped the edge of the door, her lips pressed tight. “No, tell me now.”
“It’s Emma Chandler,” he said.
The horror and dread that leapt into her eyes told him just how much the younger woman meant to her. “Please say she’s all right.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and saw her brace herself for what was to follow. “I’m afraid she’s dead.”
“I’ve been an educator for more than twenty-five years,” said Jane Owens later, as they walked along the banks of the swiftly rushing river. “Every child is unique and distinctive, each in his or her own way. But I never had a student quite like Emma.”
“She was an extraordinarily talented artist,” said Sebastian.
“She was beyond extraordinary. I firmly believe she had the talent to be as famous as Lawrence or Reynolds, if that was what she wanted.”
“But it wasn’t?”
A faint smile touched the older woman’s lips. “No. She wanted to open a school—a school for girls like her.”
“You mean, chance children?”
Jane Owen cast him a thoughtful glance. “Have you known many such children?”
Sebastian stared across the narrow, rocky river, toward the barren slopes of the Long Mynd rising gently above them. Amongst those of his class, such children were most often handed over to foster families and forgotten—if they weren’t simply abandoned on the parish. Some were hidden away in schools, as Emma had been. But only a rare few were raised within the family, usually disguised as a “distant cousin,” their true identity carefully hidden even from the children themselves.
“Not really,” he said.
She nodded. “I’ve taught several over the years. They . . . they have problems it’s difficult for the rest of us to understand. Those of us who grow up within a family—” She gave a quick, dry laugh. “Even if it’s not one we particularly like—that family still helps us define who and what we are. It’s so much a part of us that we tend to take that aspect of our identity for granted.”
Sebastian remained silent, his gaze on the swirling waters beside them. He’d grown up thinking he knew his family, only to realize that it had been a lie, that half of his heritage was a question mark, a dark, mysterious unknown that alternately intrigued, tormented, and repelled him. It was as if a yawning hole had opened up inside him that he was both desperate and terrified to fill.
“But these children,” Jane Owens was saying, “the ones who are given away or secluded and kept a secret—they have no sense of who they are, of who and what they come from. They can only imagine . . . dream . . . wonder. It tends to make for troubled youngsters, full of sadness and anger. They can be quite difficult to deal with.”
“But not Emma?”
“Oh, no; if anything, Emma was the most secretive, rage-filled child I’ve ever met. She was fifteen when I first arrived at the academy. That’s an age at which all children are trying to establish who and what they are. Except, children such as Emma have nothing to work with beyond what they invent themselves. They’re adrift, essentially alone in the world. They feel terribly abandoned . . . confused . . . afraid. And angry. Very, very angry.”